SAUL TO PAUL: KANYEIHAMBA NOW SAYS NRM BETTER THAN OPPOSITION

In a huge U-turn that will surprise many, Prof GW Kanyeihamba, who has vehemently criticised the NRM government excesses even when still a judge, now says he has suddenly realized the NRM is far much better than the opposition groups seeking its ouster. Writing in a Sunday newspaper column, a clearly converted Kanyeihamba had this to say: “One thing the accident (his recent fight with traffic police in Mulago) has revealed is a vacuum and absence of opposition political parties. Go to the remotest villages in border districts and ask who the leaders of the opposition parties are. In the past, I used to have some doubts but now the (Mulago) incident I was involved in has made me sure that only NRM party and its leaders are known beyond Kampala and other towns.” It seems Justice Kanyeihamba expected a cheerful crowd of opposition-leaning citizens to come to his rescue as he battled the determined traffic cops who insisted on arresting him and his offending driver but instead the crowd was very pro-police and clearly against him for acting very belligerently yet to them, it was his driver in the wrong. This apparently gave him the impression these were NRM supporters in this slumy part of Mulago that would ordinarily be expected to be full of opposition supporters drunk on the defiance message. Prof Kanyeihamba was surprised the crowd sided with police and openly denounced him, according to the video clip that has been making the rounds on social media. Kanyeihamba himself refers to this clip in his newspaper article. Further indicting the opposition, whose cause he has always been understood to be sympathetic to, Kanyeihamba further writes that: “The NRM is the only real political party we have which, unfortunately, is now using vicious methods to frighten millions of my compatriots to vote for them even robbing them to add to their already collected taxes.” Kanyeihamba, who creates an impression that the crowd that hackled and taunted him at Mulago for defending the mistakes of his own driver Hussein, were diehard NRM supporters because he seems to have expected nothing but only reverence and respectful treatment from opposition supporters anywhere because of his perceived solidarity to their cause. In the same article, the always very fault-finding social critic also recounts his torturous ordeal at the hands of the traffic police brutes/thugs (he calls them so in the article) and commends his bodyguard Christopher for putting up a strong fight in the defense of his principal. Not withstanding all this disappointment caused by the police’s anomalous conduct, Kanyeihamba maintains the NRM remains the best political party far ahead of its competitors. In the same article the hitherto very critical judge makes political observations (regarding the opposition vs. M7 contest) that are almost similar to what Museveni praise-singers like Andrew Mwenda have previously made. Kanyeihamba indirectly seems to have been unhappy that only Miria Matembe (who has lately been very critical of the opposition) and fellow elderly citizen Fr. Gaetano Batanyenda are the only NRM critics that bothered checking on him after watching the video clip showing the traffic police attack on him. He doesn’t say it openly but he implies that failure to go check on him after the incidence is indicative of unseriousness and bad leadership in the opposition. Kitgum woman MP Beatrice Anywar recently made the same point while justifying her decision to desert opposition politics to jump in bed with Museveni’s NRM. The Ugandan citizens reading this ought not to forget President Museveni’s vow at the start of this term to ensure obliteration of all opposition voices of discontent by 2021. It seems his mission is fast being accomplished given the alarming late at which people previously thought to be non-NRM are publicly jumping at every opportunity to bash the opposition for being inadequately prepared.